Books in the Studies in Rural Culture series

Combines cultural and technological history, to show how agriculture functioned as a colonizing force in the American west. The author uses agricultural textbooks, USDA documents and settlement accounts to explore the idea that civilization progresses by bringing agriculture to the wilderness.

Tracing the history of intercultural struggle and co-operation in the citrus belt of Greater Los Angeles, Matt Garcia explores the social and cultural forces that helped shape the city.

Jane Adams focuses on the transformation of rural life in Union County, Illinois, as she explores the ways in which American farming has been experienced and understood in the twentieth century. Reconstructing the histories of seven farms, she places the details of daily life within the context of political and economic change.

Challenges the widely held assumption that frontier farm life in the United States made it easier for women to achieve rough equality with men. Using as her example the family farm in rural Nebraska from the 1880s until the eve of World War II, Deborah Fink contends instead that agrarianism reinforced the belief that a woman's place was in the home, her predestined role that of wife and mother.

This work takes the reader on a cultural tour of the American institution and landscape - midwestern families and their farms.